Gentoo Archives: gentoo-dev

From: Roy Marples <roy@×××××××.name>
To: gentoo-dev@l.g.o
Subject: Re: [gentoo-dev] Re: Monthly Gentoo Council Reminder for January
Date: Wed, 09 Jan 2008 19:29:34
Message-Id: 200801091927.40100.roy@marples.name
In Reply to: Re: [gentoo-dev] Re: Monthly Gentoo Council Reminder for January by Ciaran McCreesh
1 On Wednesday 09 January 2008 18:16:24 Ciaran McCreesh wrote:
2 > On Wed, 09 Jan 2008 17:27:52 +0000
3 >
4 > Roy Marples <roy@×××××××.name> wrote:
5 > > On Wed, 2008-01-09 at 17:01 +0000, Ciaran McCreesh wrote:
6 > > > 3.5.5 was good enough to be keyworded stable at one point. Thus, it
7 > > > can't be *that* bad.
8 > >
9 > > So what happens if a flaw is discovered in KDE 3.5.5 that allows root
10 > > access?
11 >
12 > Then the one particular part of 3.5.5 that's affected gets fixed and
13 > priority keyworded.
14
15 Lets say that there's just 3.5.5 and 3.5.8 in the tree.
16 3.5.5 is keyworded stable mips
17 3.5.8 doesn't have the mips keyword because it's horribly broken on mips
18
19 A security flaw is discovered in 3.5.5, the solution is to upgrade to 3.5.8.
20 This flaw involves code that has radically changed from 3.5.5 to 3.5.8. For
21 the sake of argument say it will take 1 month of time for anyone to create a
22 patch for 3.5.5 that fixes the flaw OR makes 3.5.8 magically work on mips.
23
24 During this month, what do you propose happens to the end user?
25
26 The choices are
27 1) Carry on as we are, user is blissfully unaware of security flaw and doesn't
28 have time to read GLSA's, etc has he's busy with real life thereby giving
29 Gentoo the reputation of shipping insecure software.
30 2) Force the user to spend a few minutes adding 3.5.5 to a package.unmask,
31 thereby acknowledging the security flaw but by his own choice keeping the
32 highly insecure software.
33
34 Thanks
35
36 Roy
37 --
38 gentoo-dev@l.g.o mailing list